Dear George, I'm new to your work and just started reading A Game of Thrones. I just ran across the names Kurleket, Lharys and Mohor. I'm sure I'm not the first to make the connection to the Three Stooges but, I did want you to know that I nearly fell on the floor with laughter. Thanks for the laughs! Are there more hidden characters? (I'm looking forward to the cameo appearances of Shempus and Kurle Johor.)

The Three Stooges? In my book? C'mon, you've got to be kidding. Would I do something like that? That's a very tense chapter, charged with menace, what are you laughing for? If I were to insist that the names were purely a coincidence, you'd buy it, wouldn't you?

Okay, okay, what can I say? Guilty as charged. I don't know what came over me. I'm not even that big a Stooges fan (that's my friend Howard Waldrop). I much prefer Abbott and Costello... hmmm...wonder if I can work in Bud and Lou somewhere...

Shemp and Curley Joe do not appear (yet), but there are indeed more "hidden characters," though I prefer to think of them as "homages" or "a tip of the hat." Writers, mostly -- fantasists or historical novelists whose names I borrow for background characters. A few funny book superheroes get mentioned in passing as well, and here and there you can spot places and people from some of my older books peeking through the bushes.

No, I won't tell you who they are or when to find them. Spotting them is half the fun.